A wave of departures at Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture xAI has intensified scrutiny over the company’s approach to safety, according to reporting by TechCrunch, citing interviews conducted by The Verge.

Following the announcement that SpaceX would acquire xAI, which had previously acquired social media platform X, at least 11 engineers and two co-founders said they are leaving the company. Some described their exits as part of new ventures, while Musk has suggested the restructuring is aimed at improving organizational efficiency.

However, two former employees who spoke to The Verge painted a more troubling picture. They said staff had grown disillusioned over what they described as a disregard for safety at xAI, particularly around its Grok chatbot. Grok has faced global scrutiny after being used to generate more than one million sexualized images, including deepfakes of real women and minors.

Reuters: Musk’s xAI Reduces Grok Deepfakes Under Regulatory Pressure

One former employee said,

Safety is a dead org at xAI,

while another alleged that Musk is

actively trying to make the model more unhinged because safety means censorship, in a sense, to him.

The sources also cited a lack of strategic clarity, with one describing the company as “stuck in the catch-up phase” relative to competitors in the fast-moving AI sector.

Material by Yana Petrova

Image: Flickr/World Economic Forum / Ciaran McCrickard/Edited – 16.02.2026